The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus and a method of detecting the state of such a apparatus by first measuring the internal state thereof, then detecting any fault or trouble state on the basis of trouble decision data, and transmitting the result of such detection to an external device.
There is known the technology of recording various data inclusive of music data in a removable disk and storing such data therein. For example, the removable disks may be a magnetic disk such as floppy disk, an optical disk such as CD (compact disk) or DVD (digital versatile disk), a magneto-optical disk such as MO (magneto-optical) disk or MD (mini disk), or a semiconductor memory.
An MD drive for recording data in and/or reproducing the same from an MD is incorporated in an MD component stereo, or is connected to a personal computer or the like for use, or is employed in a music distribution system or the like where the drive is supplied with contents data distributed from a host computer via a network.
Since a removable disk recording/reproducing apparatus such as an MD drive has a complicated internal structure, it is not furnished with technology of detecting any abnormal state or predicting the service life of its component part until occurrence of some trouble observable obviously from outside, and in most cases the cause of any induced trouble is not recognizable by a user.
In an MD drive, an optical block for recording contents data in an MD is equipped with a laser diode. It has been general heretofore that the service life of a laser diode in particular is hardly predictable as it is rendered remarkably different depending on the frequency of use or environment of installation. For this reason, it is customary in most cases that the user inquires of a maintenance center, for example, of the MD drive manufacturer after actual occurrence of any problem in the recording or reproduction of data upon expiration of the service life of the laser diode, and then the necessary action of replacing the part or the like is carried out.
Therefore, in order to prevent depreciation of the reliability in recording the contents data by a semiconductor laser, there is no other remedy, in view of ensuring safety in the present circumstances, than replacement of the semiconductor laser in a stage earlier than expiration of the actual service life thereof, hence raising another problem that increases the cost of the component parts.